Does your brand look the same everywhere it appears?
You probably have a logo and a few brand colours, but are they written down anywhere the whole team can find them? Every new flyer and slide deck ends up with its own shade of blue. Somewhere on the shared drive are several versions of the logo, and the person who knows which one is current isn't always around to ask.
The files themselves end up scattered too. The logo sits in someone's inbox, the fonts on a designer's laptop, the colour codes in an old style guide PDF and the photos in a folder nobody can find. When a printer, a new staff member or an agency asks for the brand files, someone spends an afternoon pulling them together, and it's rarely the same set twice.
Sometimes the organisation has moved on and its look hasn't: you've grown, merged or changed what you offer, and the identity still describes who you used to be. You might be starting something new that needs an identity from scratch. Often there's a new website on the way, and you'd like the design settled before anyone starts building it.
We design your brand and settle it in a brand book, the one place where every logo file, colour, typeface and rule lives, so your team, your suppliers and the people who build your website all work from the same set.
How we run a design project
A design project runs in 4 steps, and whenever there's a choice to make, you make it looking at finished designs.
1. We start from what you already have
We begin with your organisation and the people you serve, then gather what already exists: logo files, colours and fonts, your website, the documents and signs your customers see, and any work you've done on your brand's purpose, values and voice.
If you're keeping your identity, we capture it from your live site and files, and confirm the palette, typefaces and logo with you before anything is built. If you're starting fresh, all of this becomes the brief your new identity is designed against.
2. We show you complete directions
For a new identity, we design the whole brand book, every section, in 5 different directions. That's 5 complete books you can open and read end to end. For a logo on its own, you see 10 concepts.
Seeing a direction as a finished book makes the choice easier. A palette that looks confident on a swatch card can behave quite differently across a whole book of real content, and that's much cheaper to learn before you choose than after.
Capturing an identity you already have works the same way: you choose between complete books, each built from your existing logo, colours and type.
3. You choose, and we refine
You pick a direction, then a cover for it, and every cover option is shown on the complete book. Then we refine what you've chosen, and it becomes your brand book.
Logos, identities and screens include rounds of refinement: 3 on a logo, 2 on a brand identity and 2 on each screen. If you'd like more, an extra round has a set price, agreed before it starts.
4. We design the screens your website needs
If your project includes a website or a product, the design carries on into its screens.
- UX work maps how people will use it: user research, the journeys and flows people follow, a sitemap, a content model and an annotated information architecture, which is the plan for how your content is organised and connected.
- Screen design turns that plan into high-fidelity designs of your key screens, with their responsive and interaction states, and original art direction where there's no existing style to draw from.
We count key screens, meaning the templates and states, because the patterns set there carry across the rest of the site. When we build the website as well, the same team takes the designs into the build, so what you approved is what goes live, down to the spacing and the interaction states.
What you get
Every piece of design work ends with files your team can use straight away.
The brand book
This is where your identity lives once the design work is done. It's written for everyone who uses your brand: your own team, your printer and signwriter, and any agency or developer who works with you later.
It covers your brand platform, the logo system, colour, typography, brand elements, voice and tone, the places your brand appears, the do's and don'ts, and how the brand is looked after over time. Every element comes with what it is, when to use it, how to use it and what to avoid.
The book is a single web page, with its logos, typefaces and images in a folder beside it. That means:
- It opens on any computer, from any folder, with or without an internet connection, and it shows your own typefaces because they travel in the folder with it.
- It prints itself. Press print and the walk-through becomes the full book, page by page, ready to save as a PDF, so the screen version and the paper version are the same document.
- It's yours to use, host, copy and share. Put it on your intranet, send it to a supplier or keep it on a shared drive.
To see what you'd receive, have a look at our own brand book(Opens in a new tab/window). It's where the DrevOps logos, colours, typefaces and rules all live.
Your logo files
The final logo, packaged for handover as vector files and images, so the same artwork goes on your website, your documents and your signs.
UX and screen designs
For a website or a product, you get the UX research and plans from step 4 as documents your team can review and share, and high-fidelity designs of your key screens, ready for whoever builds the site.
What it costs
Logo design, brand capture and brand identity have fixed prices.
| Service | What's included | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Logo design | 10 concepts, 3 rounds of refinement and the final files packaged for handover | $1,000 + GST |
| Brand capture | The identity you already have, documented into a brand book | $1,000 + GST |
| Brand identity | A new brand: logo, colour palette, type system and brand elements, designed in 5 directions with 2 rounds of refinement and delivered as a brand book | $5,000 + GST |
| Extra round on a logo | A round of refinement beyond the 3 included | $300 + GST |
| Extra round on a brand identity | A round of refinement beyond the 2 included | $1,500 + GST |
Brand identity includes the logo, so for a new brand you won't need logo design as well.
UX research and screen design are scoped with you before we start. We agree how much research your project needs and which key screens to design, then send you a fixed-price quote for that scope. That quote is the price. Each screen includes 2 rounds of refinement, and the quote states the price of any extra round.
Screens laid out from an identity or style guide you already have take less design work, and the quote reflects that. You approve the scope and cost before any work begins.
Where design leads
A new identity often leads to a new website, and our services cover the whole build. For government and public sector organisations, your identity can be applied to CivicTheme, the open-source Drupal theme we created, which our own website runs on. A redesign is also a good moment to bring your content across from an older system with a migration. Once the new site is live, managed hosting and a support plan keep it running and up to date.
FAQs
What's the difference between brand identity and brand capture?
Brand identity designs a new brand, logo included. Brand capture takes the identity you already have and documents it into the same kind of brand book. Both end with a brand book; the difference is whether the design work is ours.
Can we get just a logo?
Yes. Logo design is $1,000 + GST and includes 10 concepts, 3 rounds of refinement and the final files. If you need a whole new identity, brand identity includes the logo, so you won't need both.
Can we host the brand book ourselves?
Yes. It's a folder holding a single web page and its files, so you can put it on your website or intranet, keep it on a shared drive or email it to a supplier. It's yours to use, copy and share.
Do we have to build our website with you?
Design stands on its own. The brand book and screen designs are yours to hand to whoever builds your website. If we build it as well, the same team designs it and builds it.
Do you do advertising and campaigns?
Advertising and campaign work sits with specialist agencies who do it every day: above-the-line creative, media buying and campaign production. We design brands, websites and the screens inside them, and your brand book gives a campaign agency a clear reference to work from.
Can you build a component library for our website?
Yes, as part of building your website. Component libraries, the reusable building blocks a site's pages are made from, belong to the front-end work, so they're scoped and quoted with the build.
How long does it take?
We agree a timeline with you when we scope the work. Each stage waits on a choice from you, first a direction, then a cover, then your feedback in each round, so how quickly those decisions come back shapes the timeline too.
